News out of Sanford, North Carolina

Well, whad’ya know? Sanford’s probably getting an Aldi, too.

Our story this morning about the Lidl grocery store currently being built in Sanford’s south side wasn’t breaking news or anything. But the story did bring to our attention that Lidl’s main wettbewerb (that’s German for “competition”) might also be coming to Sanford — about a half mile away to the north.

Aldi, a popular grocery supply chain headquartered in Germany (like Lidl), is eyeing the vacant lot at 2814 Rosser Road, near Sanford’s Lowe’s Home Improvement and the new Starbucks. The 14,000-square-foot building will be smaller than its competitor, and if it comes, it will mean four total grocery stores within a half-mile radius — Aldi, Lidl, Walmart and the Food Lion across the street from Lowe’s on South Horner Boulevard.

That’s a lot, man. It kind of makes you think.

The Sanford/Lee County Zoning & Design Review Department met last October to review site plans for the new Aldi submitted by InSite Real Estate LLC, based in Illinois. A call made to the applying company was not returned on Thursday.

As stated in the Lidl article, that chain is currently building a few dozen new stores in North Carolina to compete with the more than 60 Aldi stores in the state. Closest current Aldi locations are in Fayetteville, Cary, Fuquay-Varina and Aberdeen. There are more than 10,000 locations across the globe, and Trader Joe’s is a subsidiary of the company.

Have any of these places even considered Tramway, Spring Lane, 421/US 1 crossing, or Northview!??!?!? We would love to have an additional grocery store on this side of Lee County to have more options. Seems like overkill on the South side of town.

Trader Joes is not a subsidiary. There are two Aldi companies. Two brothers owned a single ALDI company, but disagreed on an issue and split the company in two. In the US, one of the ALDI companies owns the ALDI grocery stores and the other ALDI company owns Trader Joes.